The New Avery Rule is based on two simple words: per diem. It’s the spending money the team gives you, and it’s about as free as money gets for a professional athlete. When I was in the NHL, we received $96 a day in per diem money during training camp (that’s 30 days, or $2,880) and for each day we were away for road games. The NHL schedule has 41 road games per team, and if you play out west, the travel schedule is brutal, so you could easily rack up 100 per diem days a season, plus training camp. That’s $12,480. All tax-free.

Consider some misleading facts: The average NHL career is five-and-a-half years long and the average NHL salary is $2.4 million. So the average guy should have a total of $13.2 million at the end of his playing days. That’s more than enough to live happily ever after.

In truth, it isn’t. Taxes take about half (if you take no evasive tax action), agent and management fees take 25 percent, and the NHL snatches another 20 percent to put in escrow, which the owners balance out at the end of the season. Sometimes, they use the players’ cash to help small-market teams. Sometimes we’d get a refund. But for The New Avery Rule purposes, consider it gone